1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to a method for generating three-dimensional (3D) geometry for computer-animated figures or the like and a system therefor.
2. Description of Related Art
Blendshape is a classic yet effective method in defining high-quality facial deformation with intuitive artistic control for applications such as films and games. One of its drawbacks is the difficulty of mass production. Blendshapes animate characters by interpolating target facial shapes. In practice, around 100 or more target shapes are needed for each character, which can result in enormous labor of meticulous facial modeling when there are many characters appearing in films or games.
Deformation transfer is a viable technique for creating large numbers of facial blendshapes efficiently. Artists can concentrate on modeling the blendshape targets of a single base character and then transfer them automatically to multiple characters. The transferred geometries are usually good enough to immediately start final cleanup and fine-tuning. This drastically speeds up the facial rigging workflow.
While this transfer pipeline proves to be effective, it also exposes the limitations of the original deformation transfer technique. First, it is not contact-aware, which for facial blendshapes causes eyelids to penetrate, or not shut completely. Secondly, it is not smoothness-aware, often yielding crumpling artifact where the mesh is extremely concentrated, e.g., eye lids and mouth corners.